


A Way of Coming Back to Us

by AmityRavenclawElf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Tom Riddle, Autistic Luna Lovegood, Bisexual Harry Potter, Brown Luna Lovegood, Child Tom Riddle, Communication, Creepy Fluff, Family Fluff, Going with the flow, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter Raises Tom Riddle, Humor, Luna Lovegood Raises Tom Riddle, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Master of Death Harry Potter, Multi, Neurodivergent Luna Lovegood, Not Epilogue Compliant, Obsessive Tom Riddle, POC Luna Lovegood, Parent Harry Potter, Parent Luna Lovegood, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Tom Riddle, Rating May Change, Teenage Tom Riddle, Thriller, Time Travel, Yandere, Young Tom Riddle, yandere tom riddle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27419911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: "I saw you in Hogsmeade yesterday," Luna said. "It looked like you were saying goodbye."Two years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry decides that some of the costs of victory aren't acceptable. He would have gone alone, had a certain Ravenclaw not turned up on his doorstep one morning. Now, he and Luna are united in their quest to create a different future, starting with a single dramatic change: raising the dark lord.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter
Comments: 48
Kudos: 239
Collections: Harry Potter





	1. Scissors

Harry couldn’t be sure whether the idea had been building within him since the Battle of Hogwarts, or since King’s Cross with Dumbledore, or if it really had emerged fully formed in that single moment at Diagon Alley, but he did know that he only became conscious of his preposterous plan when he saw George at the twins’ joke shop.

George Weasley had not taken a real break after the war. The shop hadn’t quite opened _the day after_ , but by the time Fortescue’s ice cream place and Flourish & Blotts were resuming business as usual, he was as well. He had opened the doors, invited all of the employees back. (The ones who had survived, anyway.)

But he hadn’t smiled. Just kept talking and moving, quickly enough that if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t notice that his face was completely blank. And it had been that way for a while, at every Weasley gathering: George moving, joking, even making the _sound_ of laughter, but never quite smiling.

That day, though, the day Harry had stopped by to visit the shop, to visit George and Ron, he _was_ smiling.

And that was what did it.

Because George Weasley’s smile was as brilliant as ever, but it was like the light on a candle’s wick: there, and then not, and then there again. He couldn’t seem to maintain it, just keep starting it over and over and letting it fizzle out. Smile. Smile. Smile. And if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t notice, but Harry did.

He was almost nineteen, now; after extensive, sometimes intrusive-feeling therapy sessions with Healers of the Muggle and magical variety (Hermione had insisted on it, for both him and Ron; he had rolled his eyes at first, but Merlin if it hadn’t lifted some loads), he was able to admit that every casualty in the Battle was not his own fault. 

But still, Harry was Harry. And when he saw George struggle with the smile that had been a regular fixture before the war, and Molly smother her grief with more love, more care, more sweaters, more plates at the table (seemingly inviting as many people over as possible, to avoid having to see that they were still one short), and Arthur’s hands tremble constantly, whether he was tinkering with a Muggle machine or knocking on a door, and Ginny channel her mourning into anger, on and off the field, all Harry could think was, _I have to fix this._

And maybe that was only half of it. Maybe it was also the dreams (the normal kind, now; how refreshing, to be able to dream from his own perspective again). Dreams of the flayed thing under the bench: the whimpering, lost thing. Sometimes, instead of Voldemort, it was Malfoy under the bench, looking exactly as he had when Harry had used Sectumsempra. Or sometimes it was Wormtail, struggling with his own metal hand. Choking. Every time, though, it was an enemy. Someone who had hurt him in unforgivable ways.

And every time, he was filled with sadness, watching them suffer.

Every time, he was filled with the need to help.

And he sort of knew how.

There were many places his name could get him into, no questions asked. The Department of Mysteries, unfortunately, was an exception, but what his name couldn’t do, his Cloak could. Did he have even a base-level understanding of time magic? Of course he didn’t. But he reasoned that if he managed to go to the past at all, then he would either improve something or change nothing. He wouldn’t allow himself to make anything worse. And if he went to the future, well, then that was his own problem.

So that was decided.

Then Luna knocked on his door one day.

“Good morning,” she said, holding up a basket of dirigible plums as if in offering. “I quite like what you’ve done with your hair. May I come in?”

Harry squinted at her. He had just rolled out of bed and shambled groggily down the stairs of Grimmauld Place. His hair was standing straight up on one side and was as tangled as usual on the other. “Luna, it’s dawn.”

“Mm-hm.” She beamed at him. “The best time of day to charm dabberblimps, I hear. Except in the winter, of course.”

“Of course; in the winter they live underwater,” Harry agreed, having woken up enough now to be proud of himself for remembering this tidbit from a previous conversation with Luna.

Luna managed to beam harder. “May I come in?”

“Sure.” He moved aside to give her room. “Though I can’t imagine why you’re forgoing the opportunity to charm dabberblimps.”

“I saw you at Hogsmeade yesterday.” Luna left her shoes in the entryway and half-wandered to the kitchen. “Good morning, Kreacher.”

“Young Miss Lovegood,” Kreacher greeted from atop the oven (from which he was procuring a tray of breakfast pastries).

“You were in Hogsmeade?” Harry said, frowning as he leaned against the cabinets. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Luna set the basket of dirigible plums down on the counter and began to wash them. Kreacher made a half-hearted attempt to convince her to let him do it, but he relented fairly quickly. He was accustoming himself, gradually, to being more of a roommate than a servant.

“I saw you,” Luna repeated. “You looked like you were saying goodbye.”

Harry pretended not to know what she meant. “Yeah. I don’t think Aberforth ever responded, though. Bit embarrassing; I just know that he heard me.”

“Not to Aberforth. You looked like you were saying goodbye to Hogwarts.” Luna turned away from the basin, fixed Harry with her wide, perceptive gaze, and bit into one of the plums. “Are you going somewhere, Harry?”

He knew that he would have to break the news to someone eventually. And Luna was as good as any, to be the first. In fact, better than most: Ron or Hermione would never let him go. None of the Weasleys would allow it, without a fight. “I’m thinking about going away for awhile.”

“Awhile,” Luna echoed. Her eyes unfocused, and she appeared deep in thought. “Is that what you mean, or is it a euphemism for ‘forever’?”

He knew the answer, but he couldn’t say the word. When he tried to, his mind took him back to Luna’s room, when he had first discovered that she had been kidnapped by the Death Eaters. When he had first seen the mural of himself and Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Neville, with the word “friends” linking them. He felt a need to defend his choice. “I have to save them. Fred, Collin, Dobby, Mad-Eye, Cedric. Even my parents.”

Luna furrowed her brow, and her head tilted to the side. “Time, then. It’ll be time.” She nodded, as though agreeing with herself, and her expression cleared. “I’ll go with you,” she said conversationally.

“No, you won’t.”

Luna took a few steps toward him, a pitying look in her eyes. “You aren’t meant to be alone, Harry. It makes you…disagreeable.”

“I won’t be alone.”

Luna looked surprised (more so than usual). She considered his words for a second, then mused, “Not Ron or Hermione; you’re too ridiculous to tell them you’re going, I think.”

“Ridiculous? Me?”

“You didn’t tell them you were going to let Voldemort kill you. I suppose you were right not to. But don’t take the wrong lesson from it; historically, a lot of your worst ideas have happened when you were alone.”

“And a lot of my best! I’m still a bit proud of stabbing Riddle’s diary with a Basilisk fang.”

“Who do you plan to take with you?”

“I’m not _taking_ anyone; I’ll meet him once I’m there.”

Luna blinked and said, “Oh. I see.” She seemed to figure out the whole plan then and there, because a second later she looked quite dazed. (More so than usual.) But she didn’t say that it was a mad idea, like Ron or Hermione would have. “I will definitely join you, then.”

“Luna, no…”

“Master,” Kreacher interjected, levitating the tray of pastries between Harry and Luna. “Miss Lovegood.”

“Thank you, Kreacher,” they chorused, each taking a pastry.

"And call me Harry," Harry reminded.

For a solid thirty seconds, they just chewed on the frosted delicacies. Luna licked sugar from her lips and fingers, and Harry watched with a strange, sad fondness, like what he had felt when he’d gone to say goodbye to Hogwarts. He suddenly noticed that her hands trembled a bit, too.

She had already been through too much because of Voldemort. He began to tell her as much:

“You’ve-”

“I agree with you, that Ron and Hermione are needed here, with the people who love them,” Luna said. Eyes the color of old Sickles met his. “Ginny, as well. They would leave gaping holes if they were to leave and not return. Their families have had enough loss. I believe that I am needed with you.”

Her words struck Harry to his core. The implication that she was allowed to disappear. That she wouldn’t leave holes anywhere. “Luna, your father…he might recover.”

But few did, at this stage. After this long. There was a reason Azkaban was feared by even the hardest of witches and wizards. And he had seen Xenophilius’s eyes, when he’d been freed. He had improved up to a point; he had been able to react to food, to water, to the light being on or off, after only a week out of prison. But he never had reacted to Luna’s coming or going. Harry had only visited a handful of times; he had listened to Luna regale her father with the newest conspiracy theories from his old contacts, watched her help him to eat, and accompanied her, after a Christmas spent at the Weasleys’, to bring her father the scarf and sweater Mrs. Weasley had knitted for him. More than once he had witnessed Xenophilius getting up to wander the hallway while Luna was still telling him a story.

“I would never leave if I thought I were of more use here than there.” Luna repeated herself, “I think that I am needed with you. To build a better past, present, and future for all of the people we care about. Do you believe differently, Harry?”

…

“Is all of this quite necessary?” For the third night in a row, Harry was ensconced in his drawing room, with books and scrolls and trays of snacks strewn about and hovering in midair. 

There were family records, detailed historical texts of the wizarding and Muggle variety, child psychology books, and more or less everything Luna had deemed potentially relevant. It was almost like a study session with Hermione, except Luna kept a merrier spirit and showed no evidence of feeling sentimentally toward the books themselves. She did not hug them, or sit them down gently; several times, she would rip out individual pages and discard the rest.

Luna was poring over a single parchment as she replied, “No, not really. But it’s beneficial, I think. Aren’t you having fun?” And now she did look up at him, curiously. Her wand was behind her ear, skewering one fluffy hemisphere of her thick, tawny hair.

Harry averted his gaze, with an embarrassed laugh. He actually was enjoying their conversations, but he hadn’t expected to have his feigned exasperation directly challenged. “I just don’t see why we should study our family histories instead of just making up new names.”

“Oh, I don’t think we have to make things that hard for ourselves.” Luna disentangled her wand from her hair and cast a series of near-surgically precise cutting charms to removing a book’s binding. She then gathered the growing stack of pages that had been torn from their books of origin, fit them all to the empty cover, and cast a repairing charm to make a new book out of them. She gave her newly-made book an approving smile and a home among the other useful resources; the unbound book, she threw to a far corner of the room, with the other rejected ones. (Harry had lost count of how many of Luna’s actions would have made Hermione scream aloud.) “Keeping secrets becomes difficult, in the long-term. Hiding an entire family history and blood status would be silly, if there are other options. Here,” (She pointed to a page of a book that was floating nearby.) “the scholar describes a branch of the Lovegood family which left for the continent in the late nineteenth century and was never heard from again; I could claim a relation to them, and that way I can keep my original name without worrying about problematic questions. And if they demand a blood test, I ought still to pass it, if I've understood what I read about blood tests.”

Luna’s owl, Hathor, made a small noise (seemingly of agreement) in her cage, overhead.

“It’s quite fascinating, don’t you think?” Luna said. “I almost wish we could actually go and find those lost Lovegoods; I do wonder what they got up to, and where they went, and why they disappeared so completely. If it had been around the time of Grindelwald’s rise, then we might assume some causation, but for it to happen as early as-”

“Luna?” Harry said gently, because she had asked him to interrupt her when she got off track. “Have I lost you?”

She blinked, visibly reeled in her scattering thoughts, and nodded. “Thank you. Anyway, I just believe that it would do us well to know as much about the past as we can, since we’re hoping to change it. And of course, studying time theory goes without saying.”

“Of course,” Harry said, with a self-deprecating smile. He had been open, from the beginning, about the fact that his only real plan had been to withdraw all of his money from Gringotts, pack a bag, and visit the Department of Mysteries as many times as it took to figure out how to harness time travel. He would never have studied this much.

“So we’ll be bringing these,” (Luna gestured at the books.) “and all of your money, from the Potter vault. All of the money I earned this year.” (The money in the Lovegood vault would remain there, on the off-chance that this timeline wasn’t destroyed when they left, and on the off-chance that Mr. Lovegood ever left St. Mungo’s.) “All of our clothes…”

“At this rate, you’ll want to bring Kreacher,” Harry teased.

An uncomprehending stare. “Of course we’ll bring Kreacher.”

Now Harry let out a laugh and rolled onto his back. A golden Snitch was doing figure-eights near the ceiling. He reached out a hand for it, even though it was too far to touch.

If Luna weren’t here, he would be in bed, having a nightmare or trying to sleep despite knowing what he was planning, what he was voluntarily choosing to leave behind.

“I believe there is a very real chance that things will go well,” Luna said. “He was born on New Year’s Eve in 1926. We want to arrive as close to that date as we can; If we could even arrive just a bit before, that would be even better. We’d rather be able to establish ourselves before we make contact.”

“It would be better if we can raise him from birth,” Harry agreed. “For him to never develop a hatred for Muggles.”

“And to ensure that he gets all of the necessary care and socialization. If we misaim, we should first see if we can course correct,” Luna said. “I think, if we arrive at a time when he is older than two years old, we should sneak into the Department of Mysteries and see if they’ve managed time travel then, too.”

“And if they haven’t, we just go with it.”

“Oh, yes.” Luna moved to lay beside him and stared at the ceiling, as well. Her shoulder and arm were warm, against his. “Improvising can be quite an adventure.”

“But, optimally, before 1930.”

Luna nudged away a floating book that had wandered above her face. “Before 1930.”

...

In 1934, Thomas Riddle was eight years old.

On that particular day, sometime in the middle of June, he was outside with the rest of the children. “With”, in the loosest sense of the word. While they ran about and shouted and whatever else they did, he stood alone, under a tree, testing out a pair of scissors he had swiped from a side table when Mr. Penney had finished with his haircut, yesterday. He hadn't done it out of a particular interest in the tool itself, but now he found he actually liked the scissors; he liked the way they opened, and the decisive sort of noise they made when they closed. He liked cutting the heads off of weeds and trimming the loose threads on his shorts. He challenged himself to make every weed and blade of grass the same height.

He had it on good authority that no one else at Wool's owned a pair of scissors, for Mrs. Cole would never allow them to keep something that could feasibly serve as a weapon, and if anyone were harboring some secretly, he would have known about it. He liked to have things they didn't have; it was like making his own betterness manifest in the real world, so no one could ever say it was just in his head. Being smarter, being special and different and capable of things nobody else could do, those were important to him, but they were also things that other people could just say weren't true. It was nice to collect evidence, collect things they didn't have, like scissors and a room all to himself.

Nice to prove, in all of these little ways, that this place could be his kingdom if he only wanted it to be. If he only didn't despise it so much.

Suddenly, he heard muffled voices, coming up the path.

Two distinct voices.

Tom rolled his eyes, his lips twisting sourly. A woman and a man, probably quite young from the sound of them, probably shopping for a baby because they couldn’t make one of their own. He braced himself for the uproar when the other children heard. He decapitated another weed.

The sound of the approaching voices coalesced into distinct words, the closer they came.

"...make the best of it. And don't look so solemn; it's the start of an adventure, isn't it?" That was the young woman speaking. She had an odd sort of voice; not exceptionally high in pitch, but airy in quality. Misty. Giving off a feeling quite like the illusion of mystery one feels when stepping out into one's own yard on a foggy morning.

Her words earned a chuckle, from the young man, though he sounded tense. "Your optimism never ceases to amaze me. But are you sure you don't want to wait a few days?" The man's voice wasn't airy in the slightest. Rather, it seemed to keep an eternal urgency to it. Electric.

"I'm sure. We misaimed; we're already quite late. And it's really not so bad." A moment's pause, then: "Maybe just...walk a little slower."

Tom found that he was a bit curious, now, despite himself. Was the lady injured? Was she limping along the path while her husband walked on ahead of her? He moved closer to the fence dividing the yard from the path, keeping to the greenery so as not to be spotted.

The man and the woman making their way toward Wool's were even younger than he had imagined. In fact, they were a surprise in every aspect. For one thing, they dressed like no one Tom had ever seen; it was clear, from just a cursory examination, that their garments were finely made, and probably expensive, but their unkempt presentation and bizarre accessorizing gave Tom the suspicion that they were either what Mrs. Cole would call "eccentics", or they were trying to appear poor. Surely, those were the only explanations for why the woman wore a necklace of bottle corks and what Tom could only imagine was a knitting needle behind her ear, and why the man appeared not to have combed his hair at all, in living memory. Yes, he was willing to bet that they were an eccentric wealthy couple attempting to downplay their wealth despite not knowing the first thing about poor people. They would probably come in meaning to acquire a baby and end up taking in some plucky little cherub Tom's age. The first one to show them a convincing smile, probably missing front teeth.

Tom's curiosity waned as disdain curdled in his stomach. He returned to his original spot under the tree and resumed trimming the weeds. One of his peers would be leaving today, he was sure of it. Good. It meant less noise here, less crowding.

But they would be going to a better place, better than the bedroom that Tom had secured for just himself by being "ghastly" with all of his past roommates, with better things than Tom's little stolen treasures. For the sole purpose of stoking his own scorn, Tom imagined who it would be. No one special. No one as smart as he was. Maybe it would even be one of the other Thomas's: the one called simply "Thomas", or the one called "Tommy", or the one called by his middle name, "Clarence". Tom was certain that he would breathe fire if it was one of them. He didn't care about being adopted by the freaks, of course, but he didn't like the other Thomas's to have attention. The other Thomas's deserved nothing.

"Mister! Missus! You won't leave me here, will you?!"

As expected, once they spotted the approaching couple, every orphan in the yard ran, screaming, to the fence, pressing their faces against the bars, reaching their hands out as if desperate, and showing off their practiced angelic smiles or martyred tears, begging to be taken away.

Tom rolled his eyes at all of the noise, but watched, dispassionate and morbidly curious to see how his peers would interact with the weird pair. Halloway's technique was improving; the trembling lip was a nice touch, and he was learning to actually cry real tears. Unfortunately, he was much too ugly for a rich couple to want him. Grayson had a shot, though; her pigtails and the way she fidgeted with her skirt probably worked a treat; she still had her front teeth, but her side teeth were gone, which was close enough. He checked the young couple for a reaction. The man was already looking overwhelmed and fidgeting with the round eyeglasses he wore (Tom snorted at his expense. A rich person really would fall to pieces over a papercut.), but his wife merely leaned in and spoke in his ear for several moments.

And then both of their gazes fell on Tom. The man's first, and then the lady's, following his lead.

Tom stared back. What, did they wonder why he wasn't with the rest? Did they expect him to beg, as well? To cry or beam at them and say how hungry he was, or lie that he'd seen a mother and father just like them in a dream? Never. He deserved to leave this place, was the most deserving, in fact, but he would never beg for it.

They weren't looking expectant or confused, though. They were looking...oddly. The man seemed to read every expression on Tom's face, and the overwhelmed look he had worn when the other orphans first accosted them drained away, replaced by a sort of understanding. And the lady at his side looked at Tom blankly for a moment, her owlish eyes unblinking. Then she smiled and called out, in her airy voice, "Are you Tom?"

His stomach fell into his shoes, his heart beating in his throat, as surprise and a forbidden emotion made him acutely aware of the hotness of the sun.

"I'm Tom!" the one actually called Thomas shouted out, and then Tommy and Clarence joined in with their stupid voices, but the man never glanced away from Tom, and the woman only did to sweep an apologetic look over the rest, as if they did not even exist in the spectrum of the couple's consideration and she could do nothing about that.

The two of them...could have been from some sort of hospital or something. They could have been looking for Tom only to take him away and look at his brain and say that it was wrong. But people from hospitals didn't come in man-woman pairs, did they? Maybe that was what Mrs. Cole wanted him to think; maybe she had specifically requested a man and a woman to trick him into going quietly. Or maybe they were from a church, or...

Mrs. Cole suddenly bustled outside, evidently having heard the commotion. (A hush fell, among the children.) She had emerged from the _front_ door, and not the side, so she was walking down the path to the couple rather than across the yard to the orphans. Her stunned expression did away with Tom's theory that she had invited the two. Mrs. Cole was not good at pretending; if it looked as though she hadn't been expecting them, then she hadn't.

Then why did they know his name?

"Begging pardon," she said, her eyes moving at a comical speed to take in the oddness of the man and the woman. "How may I help you?"

Tom, who found he had started wandering closer to the scene (and whose focus was not even nicked by his peers making such a show of scrambling back from him and giving him a wide berth; they always did that, ever since he had proven his mettle against them), got a proper look at the couple, now. He had spotted, from a distance, that the woman was brown-skinned, with long, thick hair the color of honey, and that the man was tan and fairly lean, with ink black hair in disarray, but he hadn't been able to see (even with his impeccable eyesight) that the man's eyes were a striking green, and the woman's were an intriguing, foggy sort of dark gray-brown. He hadn't noticed that the man's glasses sat frustratingly askew on his nose or that the woman's fingernails were inexplicably painted mauve.

It felt absurd to call them a man and a woman, now; next to Mrs. Cole, they looked nearly like children.

"My name is Harry Potter," the man said. "This is Luna. We're here to adopt."

Poor choice of words; the throng of children resumed the uproar (Tom flinched at the sound of it.) until Mrs. Cole leveled a severe look on them, and they shut up again. "Well, that is good to hear," she said. She was doing a poor job of concealing her perplexed evaluation of them; the one called Luna offered her a friendly smile and indulgently indicated her own cork necklace, explaining:

"I made it myself."

Which was obvious. Tom watched with amusement as Mrs. Cole clearly fought the urge to say, _Why, though?_ "Shall I invite you in? I can arrange for you to interview some of the children..."

"Actually, we came with a particular child in mind," Harry said. He looked guiltily at the crowd of children spectating at the fence, and Tom couldn't imagine why. "Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Tom's heart pounded against his ribs, his skin warmed, and he was suddenly torn between the lingering wary suspicion that he wasn't _really_ being adopted (or else that the couple was making some sort of mistake and they really did want Tommy Banks and not him), the smug glee that the other orphans, whom he so loathed, were being made to _watch_ him be chosen over them, and the strong but irrational need for everyone present, aside from himself, to close their eyes, to stop ogling the numerous eccentricities of Harry and Luna, for they had said _his_ name, and so they were _his_. Who was Mrs. Cole to stare at Luna's bizarre jewelry? He didn't share. He would never share what was _his_.

Needless to say, these feelings were far too at-odds to properly act on.

"Oh, I see," Mrs. Cole said. She appeared to be wrestling with conflicting emotions of her own: most likely, joy at potentially being rid of Tom at last and worry that it would reflect poorly on the orphanage once Tom inevitably showed them his personality. That they would change their minds.

Oh, and that was a risk, wasn't it? But no matter; he just wouldn't allow it. If they did adopt him, he would simply not let them bring him back.

"Well then." Mrs. Cole donned a bright and quite artificial smile. "Why don't you come inside, and we'll have all the details squared away."

Tom's grip tightened on his contraband scissors as Harry and Luna followed Mrs. Cole into the orphanage. It was just to sign papers, probably, but he didn't like them going out of his sight now that they were choosing him. He had the momentary and ridiculous impulse to open the scissors wide and snip at the air between the woman and the couple, as if there was some invisible rope that was making them follow her inside. 

She would convince them to choose someone else once she had them alone; he knew it. She would rather have to keep him than have to deal with them coming back indignant saying she'd saddled them with a freak...

But then... _they_ were freaks, weren't they?

Hope fluttered in Tom's chest. Harry and Luna were visibly freaks; they were weird at first glance! Surely...

Wools' front door closed behind them and Mrs. Cole, and Tom ground his teeth.

They wouldn't choose anyone else. They had come already knowing his full name, his _middle_ name; surely that meant they were relatives or something. 

Though they didn't look like him. Neither of them.

Still, they knew him. Family friends, maybe. They would adopt no one at all before they adopted a different child.

When Mrs. Jones stuck her head out the back door and rang the bell for all the orphans to return to the inside corridor in an orderly line, Tom stayed at the fence. He ignored her calling his name, kept holding the bars of the fence until she came stomping through the grass and pinched his ear (She then recoiled as if he had burned her; still, it got his attention). He was chagrined in the extreme when he at last went inside to join his peers. They didn't dare laugh at him, but still he hated that he had let them see that he cared.

He sat through his lessons with an impassive face, as if nothing of interest had happened today at all, while his heart thumped at double speed. Why were they taking so long? Why hadn't they plucked him out of class yet? Had Mrs. Cole successfully warned them away, or else directed them to adopt a baby instead, or...If he had to sleep another night here because of that stupid woman, he would burn this place to the ground. He would! He didn't care if it meant he had nowhere to go. He would rather...

"Mrs. Cole?" the teacher said, lowering her pointer with a confused look, as if the existence of anything besides arithmetic were news to her.

Tom fought to keep his breathing even and his expression bored.

Mrs. Cole, indeed, was standing in the doorway, her lips pressed together all thin. "My apologies, Mrs. Jones," she said primly. "Might I borrow Tom, please?"

Tom's body felt as if if it were vibrating, but he breathed evenly, kept a neutral face, rose from his seat with a well-maintained mien of apathy. Tom, she had said. Not Thomas or Tommy, not Clarence.

And of course not them. What were they, anyway? Not a one of them smart or interesting or special, like him. Of course it was him.

He strolled out of the classroom and into the dank gray corridor, in which Harry and Luna (waiting just behind Mrs. Cole) stood out like a pair of sore thumbs, in their colorful garments: Harry in a distinguished maroon, and Luna in bright greens and purples. Both of them watched him approach, both with different kinds of curiosity.

"Tom," Mrs. Cole said, sinking her hand onto his shoulder heavily. "This is Mr. and Mrs. Potter."

Harry and Luna shifted, as if what Mrs. Cole had said was slightly wrong in some way but they had mutually and wordlessly decided not to correct her. Tom thought back and determined that they hadn't, in fact, ever said that Luna was Harry's wife. Tom eyed them both. She couldn't be his sister; even putting aside how little they resembled each other, they would have corrected Mrs. Cole if that were the case. And the slight blush that came to Harry's cheeks...no, it was unlikely that they were relatives at all. But Tom decided that the answer to this question wasn't as important as the revelation that Harry and Luna were easy to read and dreadful at keeping secrets.

"They will be adopting you today," Mrs. Cole continued, "and I hope that you will be a _good boy_ for them."

"You think I want to come back _here?"_ Tom asked, keeping his eyes on Harry and Luna all the while. Best test the waters now. If they told him not to be snide, well then, he'd know what he was dealing with.

But they didn't tell him not to be snide.

Harry laughed at Tom's comment, a kind of tense but accepting like chuckle, and Luna merely looked around her, as if she hadn't thought to take a critical look at the place she was standing in. Not strict disciplinarians, then. Good; that would be tedious.

"We'll miss you," Mrs. Cole added, and the words could not have rung more hollow. "Now...why don't you go and get acquainted with your new parents? They can help you get your things from your room."

Harry cleared his throat. "We'll help you pack whatever you'd like to bring," he said, redundantly, "but we'll be buying you new clothes and possessions, so you needn't think you _have_ to bring anything."

Tom's eyebrows lifted, but he refused to look excited at the notion of having new things bought for him. The tingly hopeful feeling was growing stronger, and it was growing harder to rein it in as evidence kept fueling it. But no, he would be happy for a reality, not a promise. "Do you always dress like that?" he asked.

" _Tom_ ," Mrs. Cole said scathingly, but Harry just laughed again and Luna earnestly answered:

"Oh, no. Normally we dress much more strangely; we chose these clothes to avoid making a spectacle." And then she smiled a sunny smile, as if she hadn't an inkling of how peculiar they both looked.

Harry was laughing at her, too, now. So at least _he_ knew. "Would you like to show us to your room?" he asked politely.

Tom nodded briskly and led them in the correct direction. They fell into step behind him, whispering to each other as if they thought he couldn't hear.

"Are you alright?" Harry was asking.

"Mm-hm," Luna responded. "And you needn't keep asking; when I'm not, I promise I'll tell you."

"Sorry. I don't mean to...condescend."

"I'm not offended, Harry. I think your concern is endearing."

A similar exchange to the one they'd had outside.

Oh, just lovely. Was the woman ill? Had Tom ended up with a _second_ sickly mother? Was it decided, in the very fabric of the universe, that he was never to have two parents? That was just as well, then, wasn't it? Because this time, he had a father, too, and that was enough to keep him out of Wools. If Luna wouldn't last, then he would have to ensure that Harry wasn't weak like she was, and reap what benefit he could out of Luna in the meantime. If it did come to that.

"It's here," he told them, indicating the door to his room before opening it for all three of them.

"It's warmer here than it is in the corridor," Luna observed, as she entered. "Does it get cold, in the winter?"

Tom scowled, turning his face away. It did, but his poverty was not hers to expound about. The room belonged to him. Just him, because he had made sure of it. She was not to insult it. "Every place gets cold in the winter," he said.

"Umbropods make people feel hot in the winter and cold in the summer," Luna said. "It's a terribly problematic symptom, but quite easy to identify, so very few people die of it anymore."

Harry, who was closing the door behind them, grinned and said, "Merlin, Luna, you're telling him about umbropods before we tell him about magic?"

"More people should know about umbropods," Luna maintained. "Too often, people mistake them for centipedes and keep them as pets."

"I've never known anyone who has kept a centipede as a pet."

"I'm sure you haven't, because they're usually umbro-"

Tom cleared his throat, and Harry and Luna both returned their attention to him. "Magic?" he prompted, crossing his arms.

The playful atmosphere abated. Harry lowered himself to Tom's eye level and slowly said, "We know that you can do things that the other children here can't. It isn't anything wrong with you, and it isn't anything wrong with them. It's just that you can do magic. It's perfectly natural for you to have magic, and it's perfectly natural for them not to have magic. So..."

"Magic?" Tom repeated, interrupting Harry's meandering speech. He looked between the two adults and felt, for the first time, that he was being understood. Magic. He could do magic. They hadn't even seen him do anything strange, and yet they knew. It didn't yet matter how; he was finally hearing the right words for it. Not the word "freak" or the word "mad". He was magic.

"Your mother was a witch," Harry continued, carefully. "She lived an unpleasant life and ultimately died, which is why she couldn't be here today. We didn't know her personally, but...I am a wizard, and Luna is a witch. We can do magic, like you."

For a moment, the idea that he wasn't the only one who could do magic was uncomfortable, and quite unwelcome, but it wasn't long before Tom felt himself becoming receptive. It wouldn't be people like Mrs. Cole using magic; it would be people like Harry and Luna. People who were special and exciting. And he could learn from them, best them, become the strongest wizard there was.

If they weren't lying.

His mother couldn't have had magic, because she was dead. Tom refused to believe that magic allowed people to die.

No. Tom would believe that _he_ was magical, but he couldn't believe that anyone else was.

"Prove it," he said.

Harry nodded, as if he'd been expecting the order. He reached for his back pocket, but Luna was already removing the stick thing from behind her ear (what Tom had initially thought was a knitting needle) and flicked it once. Suddenly, the silvery-white form of what looked like a rabbit...no, a hare, emerged from the end of her stick, her wand, and started hopping and bounding around the room. The animal must have been weightless, for it didn't disturb the bed or make a single sound as it wandered, scarcely touching down on anything.

Tom, regrettably, lost his composure; he reached out to touch the thing as it ran past, and his fingers grazed it. Indeed, there was almost no substance to it, but when he made contact, it was as though pure gaiety were coursing through his veins.

The hare dissolved a few seconds later, and the room felt dimmer, for its absence.

"A nonverbal Patronus," Harry said admiringly. "Very impressive."

"You taught me the Patronus," Luna replied, "and Professor Snape taught the nonverbal."

"Prove it again," Tom interrupted, forcefully.

Harry indulgently removed his own wand from his back pocket, made a different motion with it than Luna had, and said, "Wingardium leviosa." And the scissors rose out of Tom's pocket.

Untouched, they simply flew.

The hare could have been some sort of trick, but the scissors...

Tom grabbed them before they could fly out of reach, but his attention quickly returned to Harry and Luna. Actual magical people, like him, who were taking him away from this musty, crowded place. A witch and a wizard, and they had come to be his parents. His own parents, better than anyone who would ever take in Thomas or Tommy or Clarence. What he felt in that moment was not what he'd seen in other children, not the warmth and softness and comfort in the eyes of little boys running to their mother's arms after having gotten lost in public. No, this feeling was hard. Cold. Like the feeling of his scissors when they'd been newly stolen, when he'd slipped his hand covertly into his pocket just to touch them. Or like the loud, strong lock on the orphanage's front door. He eyed the witch and the wizard who were in his room, his _old_ room. Of all his acquisitions, they were his very best and most special.

"I still sometimes have difficulty not just saying spells out loud," Harry was explaining to Luna. "Especially when I'm not in danger."

"I could try teaching you," Luna offered. "Like a reverse-DA."

"Maybe while Tom is at school; while he's around, I suspect we'll be busy."

Tom found he did not like them talking amongst themselves. He was learning a lot, just letting them babble on, but he would like them to be more interested in him than each other. "There are schools for magic?" he interjected.

Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second. "There are. You won't be invited to start there until you're eleven, though. I was talking about regular school. With Muggles: those are non-magical people."

"I don't want to go to school with Muggles anymore," Tom said forcefully. "I don't want to see another Muggle ever again."

Harry's whole demeanor turned grim, and Tom found what he had been looking for: the line. That was where Harry drew the line: at Tom's contempt for Muggles. Fine. He checked Luna's reaction (for, even if she might be ill, her responses to him mattered for now), and she had a slight wrinkle between her eyebrows, as well.

"We think living here might have had an impact on your social skills," she said softly. "We meant to take you in sooner, but...it wasn't possible."

"Luna," Harry cautioned.

"You mean you knew of me, before now?" Tom said sharply.

"Not before today," Luna said. "It wasn't possible for us to take you in before today."

"Then how could you have meant to take me in sooner, if you didn't know about me?"

Harry sighed loudly, moved to Tom's wardrobe, and threw it open. There were three hanging outfits and a box of stolen things. Harry reached for the box, and then withdrew his hand as if deciding against it. "Do you want any of this stuff?" he asked. Dodging Tom's questions; he made a note of that.

"All of it," Tom said, for the orphanage would just distribute his possessions to other children if he didn't take them with him, and that was not acceptable. "And you don't have to buy me any clothes if you don't make me go to school with Muggles."

Both of them appeared to deflate a little. "It's not a punishment or exchange," Harry said, while gathering Tom's possessions from the wardrobe and laying them on the bed for Luna to fold up. "It's good for children to make friends their own age, and you shouldn't wait three years to do it."

"I've had enough Muggles for a lifetime," Tom said darkly. He could feel that he was pushing things, but he could make up for it later; he did not want to yield on this point.

" _These_ Muggles," Harry insisted. "There's a whole world you haven't even seen yet. Of course, we'll be introducing you to the wizarding world, but you should see some of the Muggle world, too. There are wonders you wouldn't want to miss out on."

Tom should have kept pushing, maybe made some dry riposte such as "Wonders like school?", but for the moment he was distracted by a feeling like awe, and all he could say was, "Wizard world?"

"You'll see a bit of it today, while we're out," Luna promised. "And of course, when we get home, you'll meet Kreacher."

And suddenly the awed feeling was gone, and replaced with something like tar boiling inside him. "Who's Kreacher?" They had another child? No, he would not have any siblings. That was not allowed. After all this time in Wool's, struggling to make space for himself, he would never have a sibling. Never share his parents with anyone. This "Kreacher" would simply have to have some sort of accident, that was all...

"Kreacher is a house elf," Harry explained, abating the boiling. "A magical creature. He...Well, house elves were enslaved by wizards long ago, and a vast majority have only known servitude their whole lives. Only finding joy in serving witches and wizards." The concept enthralled Tom, but he only had a second to get attached to it before Harry went on, "So, we've been trying to help rehabilitate him. Helping him to take some time for himself and stop calling us 'master' and 'mistress' all the time."

In a moment of impaired self-control, Tom demanded, "Why?" Then, he caught himself. "I mean, why were they enslaved?"

Harry did not appear convinced by the backtrack, but Luna, who had finished slipping all of Tom's belongings into a satchel (which oughtn't have fit them all), serenely said, "I think you will enjoy History of Magic. That's good; I always worried that it might have hurt Professor Binns' feelings, that everyone ignored him. But then, I can't say I know what dead people feel." Luna slipped the satchel up onto her shoulder and started toward the door. "Is this everything?"

"Yes," Tom said, and at the same time Harry reached for the satchel saying, "Luna, let me..."

While custody of the satchel was being switched over, Tom quickly asked (for they wouldn't be able to talk about it once they left the room), "One of your professors died?"

"Not while he taught us," Luna said. "The story is, he died in the nineteenth century, in the staff room. When he got up to teach the next morning, he left his body behind. We've only ever known him as a ghost."

"Is that common? Are there many ghosts? Why do wizards die at all?"

"There are a fair amount of ghosts. It isn't exactly common, though." Harry was looking concerned about Tom's line of questioning, but Luna merely observed: 

"He asks clever things, Harry. Maybe he'll be in Ravenclaw this t-" And then suddenly, her hand flew to her head, and she sank onto Tom's bed as if her legs couldn't support her. "Oh..."

"Are you alright?" Harry asked, hastily crouching before her while Tom spitefully spectated.

"Mm-hm," Luna answered. "My mind just went in more directions than I was expecting. I'm sure I'll get used to it."

Not the words of someone deathly ill. Maybe she wouldn't die, after all. Best to be sure where they stood, though. "Are you sick?" Tom asked.

Luna tilted her face toward him. "No, I'm not sick. These are just the consequences of experimenting with complex magic after only a short time to study it. I'll get used to it, Harry," she added, again.

"Maybe we should go straight home today," Harry said, "and take him out tomorrow. He'll enjoy seeing the house, and we'll get to stay out longer if you've rested up."

"But it's his Adoption Day," Luna said, as though the idea offended her. "We should at least get him a gift before we turn in, and we can give him the full tour of Diagon Alley tomorrow."

Tom's assessment of Luna was growing more favorable by the minute. So far, Harry was less frustrating to talk to, but Luna had her virtues as well. He would have to get each of them alone to really evaluate them, but having someone so eager to give him a gift made him think of the spoiled children he'd seen walking with their mothers in the city. The ones who pointed at things in shop windows and asked over and over again, knowing that an answer might change from a no to a yes if they applied the correct effort to it.

"Alright," Harry relented, "but his gift will be from a Muggle shop. Diagon Alley deserves a proper day's introduction."

...

Tom was quiet, once they left the room.

Luna was curious as to what he was thinking, but she didn't preoccupy herself with it; she was rarely impatient, especially as far as getting to know people was concerned. She had always thought poorly of things like Legilimency (in application, that is; not so much in study), as they seemed like cheating; familiarity was a thing that came with time, and conversation. It was a gift that was earned. It oughtn't just be _summoned_ , like an old textbook.

"Thank you, Mrs. Cole," Harry said, as the caretaker handed over Tom's adoption papers.

"Thank _you_ , once again," the woman replied, "for your generous donation to Wools."

Luna smiled. They hadn't liked to see all of those children begging to be nurtured, but hopefully their donation would go towards giving them a nice holiday, or heartier meals, or better winter blankets. If not, they could always donate again. She might even have suggested they fix up the place magically, but they didn't want to get into hot water with the Ministry so early into their time here.

Time.

Luna managed not to stagger again, because this time she was ready for it: the intense feeling of discovering anew (and every time, it was anew) how vastly the web of time stretched. Most of the time, she was just in her own head, but if she thought too deeply about the nature of what they had done to be here, she found herself agonizingly conscious of each iteration of her mind, in the different streams of reality: the Luna who had arrived here with Harry the moment Tom was born, the Luna who had arrived here with Harry a moment before, or a moment after. So many different selves, and while she doubted she would ever have the fortitude to interact with even one, she could feel them sometimes. As if her own heart was being forced to accommodate a million heartbeats. It was panic-inducing, but it didn't feel like a danger to her. As she'd told Harry, she was sure that she would get used to it.

Anyway, she supposed that she was allowed a bit of lingering panic. She had perished today, after all.

And Harry had brought her back! That had really been more of a shock: how, when it happened, when it was too much, when the forces of time tore into her and sent her carelessly into the inexorable current of death, when her own successful use of the Department of Mysteries' magical equipment was rewarded with the sudden feeling being snipped away, snipped free of the body anchoring her to the only world she had ever known...Harry had been the one to fish her out. Harry's eyes, damp and pleading, had been the ones to greet her here, in 1934.

He was really full of surprises.

"Luna?" Harry said, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Mm?" she hummed vaguely. They were walking down the path from Wools, now. The sun still hanging high in a sky so blue it looked like some sort of potion. _Stir until deep azure blue. Add the doxie venom one drop at a time._ She blinked and focused again. Had Harry been speaking? Surely not.

Tom was giving her a skeptical look, as if he felt she could do with a great deal of improvement before he could be satisfied with her as a guardian. Luna smiled; he was getting to know her, too.

"How's about we get some ice cream, and then let Tom pick out his gift?" Luna suggested. "Then we'll turn in; I'm sure Kreacher misses us, and we have a full day tomorrow." They had already introduced themselves to the Potters, since they were already using their surname and needed connections in the wizarding world. To their surprise, the family had proved unexpectedly welcoming; they had immediately offered up one of their spare houses, for them to live in, and they had invited them to stay for dinner tonight. Harry had then explained that they would be rather busy for the rest of this day, and so it had been agreed that they would have dinner with the family _tomorrow_ night.

"Sounds good," Harry said. "Tom?"

Tom nodded, vigorous and adamant. He was holding his scissors in both hands, now, and tracing the blades with his fingers while his eyes, full of a solemnity that Luna hoped would fade over time, remained on Harry. "I have more questions," he said firmly.

Harry smiled and beckoned for Tom to walk between them. "That's to be expected."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like the Harry-adopts-Tom genre, so I thought it'd be fun to see what it's like to write it. Added Luna and Kreacher to the mix because I like the dynamics that are made possible with that combination.
> 
> (I worry this isn't my best work; on the first chapter of "Rule One: Don't Be Afraid", I had a lot of really sweet people commenting that I kept/keep topping myself, so as I wrote this one I kept imagining those same people going "Well, never mind; there's been a definite regression in quality here," lol. But I enjoy writing it, nonetheless.)
> 
> Please comment!!


	2. Ice Cream

Harry reached to hold Tom's hand when it came time to cross the street, and Tom flashed him a hilariously scornful look. "Nothing wrong with accepting help," Harry said mildly. "The street can be unsafe, and we want you to be safe."

"Hold Mother's hand, then," Tom said, glancing at Luna as if he earnestly believed that she might wander into traffic. When she turned her head to return his gaze, his expression quickly softened. "May I call you Mother?"

Luna looked surprised, startled, and curious (and Harry supposed that one had to _know_ her in order to detect all of that in her already-wide eyes), but her smile was sweet and encouraging. "I didn't know that you'd want to," she said honestly. "I assumed that you would be wary and withdrawn with us until we earned your trust."

Harry had assumed the same. More than that, he had expected Tom to be more comfortable with addressing them as equals, rather than as authority figures, given his history with the people who'd last had power over him. But maybe he _wanted_ to have authority figures he could trust. Or, even if not, Harry could understand how Tom might hope to benefit from this approach.

"Well, I finally have someone to call Mother," Tom said, innocent as a cherub. "And Father," he tacked on a second late. "I'd like to say it as much as I can." Then he slipped his small hand into Luna's and crossed the street with her.

Harry smiled covertly, as he followed them. He was curious to see where this went: whether Tom meant what he said or if he was employing some kind of tactic, and whether Luna would baffle him in some way. And anyway, he had noticed that he and Luna had been talking rather a lot; individually, they were both good listeners, but when they got together, especially after the war, they had a tendency to banter. Perhaps it was best if he fell back for a while, so Tom could get used to them rather than getting overwhelmed. (He tried to imagine what his introduction to magic would have been like, were it done by Hagrid and, say, Professor McGonagall, instead of just Hagrid, but he found the thought both too amusing and too painful to focus on, now.)

"I love it when my expectations are subverted," Luna said. "We had planned for you to call us by our first names, but if you want to call me Mother or Mum, of course I won't mind."

"How long _did_ you spend planning to adopt me?" Tom probed subtly. Following up on their earlier ambiguity on the subject, which Harry had suspected he eventually would.

"Oh, that _is_ a good question," Luna praised; Harry could hear the genuine smile in her voice. "I'll try to be completely honest; it might confuse you more, but I would hate to be deceptive. In truth, we planned it for a few weeks. I don't know the exact number of days- Do you, Harry?"

Harry didn't get a chance to answer; Tom was already cutting in:

"But you said it was impossible for you to adopt me before today. You said you didn't even know of me before today."

"That's true; we didn't," Luna agreed. "But we've also been planning to adopt you for weeks. I always find it exciting when truths appear to contradict, but if you're frustrated by it, I'm sorry."

"Tell me the real truth."

"I haven't lied. I just haven't given you all of the information necessary to understand, because we don't believe you're old enough to know all of it. That doesn't upset you, does it?"

"No," Tom answered, his voice very neutral-sounding. "I'm not upset."

"That's good. Truly, this is the earliest we could have come for you. I do wish we could tell you more. If it's any compensation, I've always found it more rewarding to _find_ the answers to these sorts of riddles."

" _Riddles?_ " Harry put in slickly, and Luna let out a single chirp of laughter that was so loud she made the nearest passersby jump. (With a pang, Harry suddenly remembered being on the Hogwarts Express just before fifth year, and watching Luna laugh riotously at one of Ron's jokes. Surrounded by Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville...)

"Oh, it's your last name!" she observed, apparently teeming with mirth at her accidental pun.

"Is Potter really _your_ last name?" Tom asked. Impressive; he had also picked up on their evasiveness when Mrs. Cole had assumed they were married.

"No," Luna answered. "My full name is Luna Lovegood. Potter is Harry's surname. And his family's."

Unexpectedly, Tom didn't address her reference to an extended family whom he hadn't yet met. "So you and Father aren't married," he surmised. "Are you living in sin?"

This, too, got the attention of several people walking nearby- or, if his words didn't, then Harry's startled laugh certainly did. "No," he answered, since he wasn't sure that Luna knew what the question meant; she wasn't naive, but he wasn't sure how familiar she was with Muggle taboos. "We're just friends."

"Friends who have adopted a child together?" Tom said skeptically.

"Mm-hm," Luna said. "Though, now that I think of it, we may have to present ourselves as newlyweds to avoid questions on the subject. For the Muggles, at least; I think the Potters have assumed that we are engaged, and no one in the wizarding world will mind us adopting prior to marriage, so long as we are engaged. Especially since Harry implied that he knew Miss Merope personally."

"Who's Miss Merope?"

"That's your birth mother's name," Harry said gently, increasing his pace now to walk beside them again. "Merope Gaunt."

Tom was silent for a time. The ice cream parlor, their first stop, was in sight when he spoke again: "Are all of the Potters wizards, then?"

(Not following up with any questions about his mother or her family. Was that odd?)

"Oh yes. The Potters and the Lovegoods are both wizarding families."

"What about the Riddles?"

"The Riddles are a respected Muggle family," Harry answered, and he saw Tom's lips twist with distaste. "The Gaunts are a wizarding family, but there are very few of them left: one, aside from you. Your uncle. I...would not encourage you to meet him."

Harry expected, this time, for there to be more questions on the subject, but again Tom fell silent. It was as they were pushing through the doors of the ice cream parlor that the boy sweetly said, "Potter sounds like a common name. I think I'd like to be a Lovegood, like Mother."

...

Tom was not used to holding someone's hand, but the sensation was not as annoying as he'd braced for.

In fact, he found there were things to enjoy about it. He was able to control the pace, when they walked. And the direction, for that matter (though he hadn't had to intervene much, in that regard; he was more than pleased with where they were going). Luna apparently had a tendency to fidget her hand, which had irked him at first, but after a while her little pulses and finger fluttering sank beneath his notice.

Anyway, it was important that he make his new mother love him right away.

Mrs. Cole had never so much as liked him, because by the time he had become conscious of how it benefited him to earn her favor, her opinion of him had been set in stone: he was strange and cranky and unpleasant, in her eyes. Always either a freak who deserved to be bullied or a bully who deserved to be punished. And he could never even pretend to forgive her for it, for liking others and not him; he hated her, and so her dislike for him only grew into unease and fear, and her fear had been rewarding, for lack of her favor.

Luna and Harry were a fresh start, and they were only his, which meant he not only had a chance, but also an incentive, to work harder with them than he had with Mrs. Cole. But he knew that when he spoke to them both at the same time, they distracted each other, so he was focusing on Luna now. After all, she had proven the most willing to dote on him, and given the choice, he wanted to secure that first.

His skin was still tingling with anticipation at the mere fact that he had such a choice to begin with: which of his new parents he would ingratiate himself with first.

He squeezed Luna's still-squirming hand (She squeezed his hand back, twice, and he responded three times in kind. She didn't go for four, so he supposed he'd won.) and leaned into her arm. She smelled like maple trees and some sort of citrus fruit, but not one he'd ever tasted. 

(Physical contact was weird, but he felt he was mastering it quickly. Doing what he'd seen other children do.)

"Muggles have such interesting ice cream flavors," she was saying to Harry, whilst scanning the flavor list with intrigue. "What do you usually get?"

"Lemon," he answered. "But this shop doesn't have that, so I'll go with strawberry today."

"I like the sound of vanilla," Luna mused. "What would you like, Tom?"

"I'll have vanilla, like you," Tom said. He kept a firm grip on his own excitement; as with all things, he would believe that he was actually getting his own ice cream when it was in his hand, and not a moment sooner. He angled his face even further into Luna's arm and shirt; he liked the citrus smell. And it wasn't so bad to touch another person by choice; it was when other people suddenly touched _him_ that he wanted to writhe out of his skin and jump into a lake.

They made it to the front of the line, and Harry ordered for all of them. A minute later, an ice cream cone was placed into Tom's hand for the first time in his life, and he went to sit with his parents at a table by the window. He chose to let them sit together and himself across from them, so that he could look at them both at the same time.

Like spreading all of his treasures across his bed and standing back, to behold them all.

"Even the cone is cold," he observed. He gave the confection itself a single cursory lick and instantly felt as if his whole brain was aflutter with sweetness.

"Oh, I like this flavor quite a lot," Luna said. "And it's already getting drippy! I like that, too; Muggle ice cream has a real sense of urgency to it. I don't know why we keep it from melting as quickly."

Harry glanced around them, as Luna was in fact talking a bit too loud, but he didn't comment on it; he just licked all the way around his scoop of ice cream in one swipe, flattening it on all sides. He was doing a poor job concealing a fond smile.

Tom wondered about that. His new parents weren't married, and he enjoyed that fact; he liked that _he_ was what necessitated them being together. That the common goal uniting them was caring for him. But it was also clear that they cared for each other a lot. Enough that he resolved to keep an eye on the situation between them. And ensure that they both came to love him more than they loved each other. After all, it was better to have parents who liked each other than parents who fought and fussed, but they should really make _him_ their priority.

"There are a lot of shops around here," Harry said, gazing out the window at the busy square. His eyes met Tom's, in their reflection on the glass. "What sort of a gift do you think you'll want?"

"We'll be buying more things tomorrow," Luna added. "At the very least, you need more Muggle clothes and wizard robes."

"I won't need Muggle clothes," Tom grumbled, forgetting for a moment that he was trying to usurp Luna's affection. "You don't have to take me around Muggles anymore, and I don't want to go to school with them."

"Ice cream was invented by Muggles," Harry pointed out. "You seem to be enjoying _that_."

"I'll bet wizard ice cream is better."

Harry scoffed. "Your attitude towards Muggles has only further convinced me that you should be around them more."

Well, that being the case, Tom kept his mouth shut on the subject. He could already tell that Harry would be interesting to study and learn; maybe he would start working on him tomorrow. He could alternate days. "What sort of gift do _you_ think I should ask for, Mother?" he asked Luna, sweetly. (Harry laughed, clearly unconvinced by his performance. Tom didn't think he'd ever met someone who laughed as much as Harry did...or as loudly as Luna, for that matter.)

"That depends on what you like to do for fun," Luna said. 

"I don't know what I like to do for fun."

For a moment, Luna seemed to droop. With a sad smile, she said, "Well, then we get to try lots of things. Maybe you like sports or games or books..."

"But wizards have our own sports, games, and books, don't we?" Tom enjoyed the sensation of saying "we", in this context.

"I personally prefer Muggle chess to wizards' chess," Harry said.

"What would _you_ get, Mother?"

"Hmm..." Luna pondered. Tom had already resolved that he would ask for whatever she suggested. After all, they wouldn't be going to magical shops until tomorrow, and there was little that Muggles could really offer him that he wouldn't rather have from wizards. "Books are always a good window into the world, but I've always liked to go outside the window and study things for myself."

"Not encouraging him to climb out of windows, I hope," Harry said.

Luna grinned. "Oh, don't be a bore. As many rules as you used to break?" She returned her attention to Tom. "When I was young, I used to love gifts that helped me to study the natural world. A telescope, or a magnifying glass, or binoculars. I would encourage you to find something like that."

"Alright," Tom said. He had no interest in looking at the stars, but seeing faraway things could be of use. He still thought wizards probably made better versions of those same things (After all, he already disagreed with Luna's praise for the quick-melting nature of Muggle ice cream; for as sweet as it tasted, he despised the drippiness, how it melted down the cone and made his fingers sticky.), but he would see the wizard stores tomorrow. Mustn't be impatient and alienate his new parents. "I'll get something like that, then."

They sat in silence for a mere five seconds before Luna cheerfully digressed, "If what Mrs. Cole told us is true, it sounds like you've been having difficulty with everyday morality."

Tom froze. Oh, Mrs. Cole had, had she? So he had been right; she _had_ been trying to dissuade them from taking him in. She had been putting his new life in jeopardy all while he stood in the yard and sat in class. She was lucky they were only telling him this now. "She said that?" he said, choosing to sound just mildly confused.

"Not in so many words," Luna carried on, and Tom noted that Harry looked wary. It was clear that he wouldn't have brought this up at all, but he trusted her enough not to quiet her. Mother was the disarmingly candid one; that was useful to know. "She gave examples of things you did to the other children, when you were living there."

Tom's fury with Mrs. Cole receded _just_ enough to coexist with the bliss he felt upon hearing the words "when you were living there". He hadn't even seen his new home yet, let alone been inside it, but already it was his. Already Wool's was in the past tense. Mrs. Cole was nothing, now. Nobody.

"I could tell you the stories she told us, if you want to fact-check. All of them suggest that you might struggle with finding significance in the feelings and wellbeing of others. If that's true, I don't want you to think it makes you a bad person. We all have trouble with different things; it's a problem we can all work on solving together."

"Not right now, though," Harry said. He was nearly done with his ice cream. "Let's handle one thing at a time."

"What thing are we on now?" Luna asked. Her ice cream was dripping all between her fingers; it was clear that she had not thought to (or chosen to) accommodate the fact that it would have to be eaten at a different pace and perhaps even in a different method than she was used to. Over and over again, it was reinforced that Harry had some history with Muggles and Luna was most experienced in the world of wizards. She grabbed a handful of napkins, with her other hand.

"Ice cream," Harry said simply. "Then shopping. Then showing Tom the house, and then dinner."

That was an itinerary Tom could get behind, easily.

...

They did not stick to just one gift. 

While they bought a pair of binoculars that Tom shortly found in a nearby shop, they also bought him new shoes, as his were worn and raggedy, and a set of pajamas, because Luna commented that they looked comfy, and a container of pomade, because they caught him staring at it.

"Do wizards pomade their hair?" he asked, hesitantly. His eyes darted to Harry's bird-nest of curls, and then to Luna's hair, his expression dubious. Luna smiled, wondering if her hair was quite in disarray. She didn't believe it was; she had tidied herself well, she thought, after Harry had pulled her back from the precipice of death. They'd had to meet his family, and it wouldn't do well to make a poor impression on them.

"Some do, and some don't," Harry answered. "Anyway, you don't have to conform to what other wizards do; we certainly don't."

"No," Luna agreed. "Daddy always used to say that conformity is like putting your brain in a fishbowl and locking that fishbowl in a cupboard." She smiled slightly, remembering. Thoughts of her family still filled her with happiness, enough that they had fueled her Patronus, earlier today. There was a great deal of sadness, too, but the sadness didn't minimize the happiness, so long as she didn't fight it. It was alright to feel both. It was alright to feel a _lot_ of both.

"So, most wizards aren't like you?" Tom asked.

"We'll let you be the judge of that tomorrow," Harry said.

"Though I don't think most of anyone is like anything," Luna said. "There are all sorts of wizards; we're just one sort. Maybe two sorts." She glanced at Harry.

"Oh, two sorts, definitely," Harry chuckled.

"And you can be your own sort," Luna added, to Tom. "Within reason."

"Within reason?" he repeated.

"Well, don't murder anyone, for example." It was easy to inflect the suggestion as if it were silly, absurd, obvious, because at the moment it seemed to be. Even knowing firsthand how he grew up in one version of events, seeing him now, still full of a latent happy energy from the sugar and the gifts, staring up at her with what she would (poetically, she thought) call 'wary wonder' from just below shoulder height, holding her hand and tightening his grip whenever their surroundings grew more crowded (as if he thought he might get lost), his potential to be anything else seemed almost overwhelming. She managed not to let her awareness of all the coexisting streams of time engulf her mind, this time; she stymied it when it was still just a strange pressure in her ears, though she felt lightheaded for a moment nevertheless. "But if you want to dye your hair green, we will support you."

"Why would I dye my hair green?" Tom asked, scandalized. "And...is this the way to your house?"

They were nearing a grayer and more desolate part of the city. Harry glanced behind them and ducked around the side of a building, and Luna followed him, Tom in tow.

"No," she answered. "We just needed to be out of sight, so that we can apparate home without the Muggles seeing us."

"Apparating is just teleporting," Harry said. "I'll never understand why we call it something different; it's just disappearing one place and reappearing someplace else. But it is very uncomfortable, when you're not used to it."

"I don't care if it's uncomfortable," Tom said, his eyes alight. "I want to go home."

Luna's eyes prickled, at the way the words fell from him, as if the sentence was one he'd heard many times but never said. "Harry?" she prompted.

Harry took out his wand, but eyed her curiously. "You can't apparate?"

She smiled. "Apparently, I haven't the focus to arrive at the destination I first mean to. We'd probably end up in three different places, if not more."

Harry shuddered. "That settles it." He offered his arm to both of them, and they all linked hands.

"It'll be over soon," Luna quickly reassured Tom, and then they were being stretched and compressed and bent through space. 

As someone who had been a passenger for side-along apparition more times than she could count, Luna had found long ago that everyone's style of apparating was different in subtle ways, and she was intrigued to feel Harry's. It wasn't as smooth as Professor Flitwick's or as gentle as Professor McGonagall's, but it wasn't as rough as Ginny's- not by half! Apparating with Ginny was like being loved fiercely. In fact, it was like experiencing the whole spectrum of human love all at once: warmth and rage and kindness and cruelty, generosity and selfishness, pride and betrayal. And then being simply deposited someplace, suddenly feeling alone no matter who else was there. (Luna suspected that apparating might be soul magic, or something close to it. She wondered if that was why Voldemort had chosen to fly instead.)

Apparating with Harry was different. Not the exfoliating, exhilarating ordeal of being unscrupulously loved, but a feeling like being held tightly through an unsteady ride. Not exactly safe, but protected. Harry's soul was protective. It was lovely.

She would have liked to explore the feeling more, but most disappointingly, she was right: it was over soon.

They found themselves standing in the front lawn of the house they'd been given (a few meters from the front path, where Harry had probably been aiming to land), and Tom tipped as if he might fall over, then regained his footing and gulped in a breath of air. "That wasn't so bad," he said.

"You look seasick," Luna replied, immediately concerned about how pale he had gone. She checked him over; he wasn't visibly splinched, but if something like blood got left behind, instead of skin or bone or muscle (rare, that _only_ blood should be displaced, but not impossible), then paleness and dizziness were the things to watch out for. She herself was not pale, and so she wasn't sure if it was normal to blanche that much after apparating for the first time. She tried to think back to her apparating lessons in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, but she had tended to look at the ceiling more than at her classmates. "We'd better get some dinner into you, quick."

Tom was not listening. His eyes were full of the house. He quickly spun around, as if to be sure that there wasn't a lesser house just behind him that was their _actual_ destination (Though there were other houses in sight, none were near.), and then he went back to gaping.

A lovely brick construction with a generous yard full of green grass and dandelions, the spare Potter house wasn't a mansion, but it was three stories high; most wizarding homes were at least three stories, no matter the wealth of the inhabitants. And the Potters were wealthy, by virtue of being such an old family, through the Peverells; they weren't rich like the Malfoys, nor as rich as they would be in the coming decades, but they had a fair amount of money, and a great amount of respect, to their name.

"Is it all ours?" Tom asked. "We don't share it with anyone?"

"Well, it belongs to Harry's family," Luna said, "but the three of us and Kreacher will be the only ones living here."

"So it's ours." Tom's eyes seemed to devour the house whole. "Take me inside," he demanded, tugging impatiently at Luna's hand.

Luna giggled and met Harry's gaze, and he led the way up the path to the front door. Tom's excitement at each new gift or revelation made her want to surround him in nice things. He was just a boy, who deserved happiness as much as any other boy. And maybe, if she could make his world kinder, then he would be kinder in return.

It would be his decision, though; that she knew. Her world hadn't always been kind, and the choice had fallen to her, how she would respond. She hadn't always responded well.

"They call this house Pride and Joy," Harry said informationally, as they reached the doorstep.

"Because a pride is a group of lions?" Luna guessed.

Harry grinned. "Probably. I was thinking, though: that's what _they_ call it, but we can call it what we want." He turned the doorknob; the house was locked to anyone who wasn't a Potter either by birth or marriage or adoption, but it yielded to him. Luna wondered if it would yield to Tom, or if he would have to take on the Potter name to open it. She supposed they had plenty of time to find out.

As soon as the door parted from the doorframe, Tom's hand slipped from Luna's, and he rushed inside; Luna was the last in, following Harry, and so she _heard_ , rather than saw, Tom trip over Kreacher, who had apparently been polishing the floor in the front room. Harry's seeker reflexes meant that he was helping Tom to his feet almost before he even hit the floor, so Luna took it upon herself to help _Kreacher_ to his feet.

"Are you alright?" she asked him.

Kreacher bowed low, as soon as he was steady. "Welcome home, Miss Luna. Master Harry. And...is this Master Tom?"

Luna turned toward Tom. He was already looking at Kreacher, with an expression she couldn't quite decipher. She supposed he must be surprised; he had never seen a house elf before. She shut the door behind them and cheerily said, "Yes, it's him!"

Kreacher bowed to Tom, whose expression remained unreadable. His treatment of Kreacher would be a good way to measure his growth as a person; Kreacher acted as a servant a lot of the time, whether they wanted him to or not, and it would not be beyond Tom's means to take advantage of him or mistreat him. Luna hoped he would treat Kreacher as a friend.

"Master Tom," the old elf greeted him warmly.

"Kreacher, is it your night to make dinner?" Harry asked, in a strangely abrupt tone; Luna sent him a questioning look.

"Every night is my night to make dinner," Kreacher said back, with a defiant smile, "including the nights when Master chooses to act beneath his station."

Luna smiled at the familiar topic of argument, from her nights spent in Grimmauld Place: Harry's insistence on sharing the workload, and Kreacher's conviction that to do so was beneath Harry's station.

Harry rolled his eyes fondly. "Tom will be needing dinner soon, so tonight can be your night, but I _will_ be cooking next time!"

"Master mustn't bet on it," Kreacher quipped, and then vanished with a loud _crack_ , presumably to start on the dinner.

"You were abrupt with him, Harry," Luna noted, still curious as to why there hadn't been lengthy introductions and back-and-forth teasing, as per their normal interactions with Kreacher.

"I didn't mean to be." Harry straightened his glasses. "We'll catch up with him properly later; in the meantime, let's have a house tour!" And he jogged up the stairs with an energy that seemed to reset Tom's earlier enthusiasm, as he took off, as well.

Luna smiled indulgently and followed; she could ask more questions later.

...

Tom darted through every room in the house, and Harry lingered back and let him explore. There were two bedrooms on the second floor, two on the top floor, a lavatory on each floor, a fair amount of closets scattered about, and a kitchen, living room, and dining room on the ground floor. All of the rooms were already furnished with beds and desks and wardrobes and bookshelves, all in bright cherry wood that Kreacher had likely spent the day polishing. He and Luna had only been here long enough to drop off Kreacher and their bags and do a cursory walk-through before going to adopt Tom, but he knew the overall layout well enough.

"Do _all_ of the rooms have fireplaces?" Tom asked, his voice full of awe.

"All of them," Harry confirmed.

"And they haven't got ash sprites in them; I've checked," said Luna, still ascending the first flight of stairs.

"Ash sprites, Luna?" Harry said. "In this humidity?"

"Always good to check. I'm happy to hear you've been reading your _Quibbler_ s, though."

"I'd be a pretty bad sponsor if I didn't."

"Which room is yours?" Tom left the second room on the second floor and began to race up the stairs to the top floor.

Seeing him like this, it was easy to forget the jealous glare he'd been leveling on Kreacher a minute ago, when Luna had gone to the elf's aid instead of Tom's. Harry had no intention of assuming the worst of Tom, especially since he was so young and in his care, but he also would not ignore danger signs when he saw them, and the way he had looked at Kreacher had been far from friendly. Luna was probably right, that Harry should have thought of a better solution than practically dismissing Kreacher, but he had panicked.

"We haven't chosen our rooms yet," Harry replied. "We're just moving here, too."

"I want the top floor!" Tom called down, from upstairs. "Wait...No, the middle floor!"

Harry chuckled. "You get one bedroom, Tom!"

"But you and Mother can take the rooms on the top floor, and I can have the middle floor to myself!"

Luna giggled again, causing Harry to suddenly realize that she had soundlessly moved to stand right next to him. He turned, reflexively, and was engulfed by her fluffy, citrus-scented hair. He retreated a half-step, his face feeling warm. Honestly. He could sense a not-so reformed Death Eater with their wand in hand from the other end of the street, and yet Luna had taken him completely by surprise.

 _You and Mother._ It was strange to hear, even after half a day of it. Even when he'd dated in the past and thought about things like marriage, even when he and Luna had spent weeks planning to adopt Tom, he had never thought of himself as a father. He had gone so far as to imagine himself as a guardian, but adding the word "father" into the equation changed things. If he thought about it too long, with regards to his relationship with Tom Riddle, it almost made him want to burst out laughing. And still, he doubted that Tom would be calling him "Father" forever; he suspected that the title would last as long as Tom felt it suited him to use it. But for now...

And Luna, as well! Being assumed married, being called "Father" while she was being called "Mother", being "friends who have adopted a child together", as Tom had so knowingly put it...

The fact that she had basically died earlier that same day hit him, as it seemed to at random times. She had nearly been gone, and he had reversed death. The knowledge of this seemed to buzz under his skin, a jittery kind of awareness. He had asked her to come back, in the way any mourner on the cusp of denial would beg the dead to awaken, and then suddenly he had seen into King's Cross station. He had seen her aboard a train, with her eyes closed and her face turned toward him. He had spoken again, "Come back," and the train had moved backwards.

She had gotten them here, had steered them through time. He still wasn't sure what all of the consequences were; death had been one, but he had reversed that, and yet still she seemed to strain against something every now and then. Did Time live in her like Death lived in him?

Stupid question; didn't even make sense.

"I don't mind, if _you_ don't," she said, and Harry called up:

"Alright, the middle floor is yours! You still only get one bedroom, though."

Tom ran back down to the second floor. "Thank you," he said breathlessly. His pallor from his first time apparating was now interrupted by light pink splotches on his cheeks, from all the excitement and exertion. Harry was impressed that he had taken the time for gratitude.

"We can move you in, while Kreacher is cooking," Luna suggested. "And if we finish early, you can see which books around here interest you; I'm sure some of them can give you helpful context about the wizarding world that we might not think to provide."

"Don't believe everything you read, though," Harry cautioned. He doubted the Potters would have blood purist texts dragging around, but better safe than sorry. "And if you read anything concerning, you can ask us about it."

Tom eyed him quizzically. Harry wondered if he was smothering. He thought about his Aunt Petunia, and once again he couldn't help laughing.

...

Seeing the fine wardrobe filled (so to speak) with his clothes and the fine desk covered in his other possessions (He slipped the scissors out of his pocket and set them on a corner of the desk opposite his new binoculars.) may not have been the highest high of the day, but it would certainly have been the highest high of any other day. Tom loved leaving fingerprint smudges on the wood of his bedposts and the metal of the doorknob, loved knowing that as early as tomorrow morning, there would be strands of his hair on the pillowcase and in his bedsheets.

It still didn't feel real, though. He was touching everything, to show himself that it was his, but he hadn't yet smothered that bit of skepticism that all of it would simply disappear from around him.

Luna laid his new pajamas across the foot of the bed. "There," she said contentedly. "That's all, so far. And you still have a lot of room, so we can really get some shopping done tomorrow."

A surprisingly positive spin on him owning very little to begin with. Tom felt that he had enough information, now, to conclude that his new mother was silly, but not as silly as she seemed. She was more candid than Harry, which was useful, though she could still be positively frustrating about conveying information in a way that made any sense. She, not Father, knew how to cast spells without saying them aloud...and yet Harry, not she, knew how to disappear one place and reappear another place. She was the one who liked to comfort and spoil him, and yet when she had seen that he was already being helped up by Harry, she had gone to help the elf.

Tom wasn't so sure about the elf. 

He didn't like that they treated it as a friend, because that meant it was taking up just as much space as a sibling would, and that was simply not allowed. Yet, even still...it was a servant. It had bowed to Tom, and called him "Master". No one had ever bowed to him before, and Tom was inclined to encourage that kind of behavior.

He had resolved that he didn't wish the elf harm _now_ , but it was on thin ice.

"Do you like your room, Tom?" Harry asked. At some point, in the process of unpacking, his fringe had been brushed back, making his hair look even more tousled and baring a forehead scar that Tom hadn't seen before: pale, splintering lines, like a bolt of lightning. Already, though, his hands were raking through his hair to cover it again.

"Yes," Tom said simply. He had two windows: one over the desk, and one across from his bed. He had never had two windows before, and he'd never had curtains, let alone thick, scarlet ones. He had wanted the top floor, at first, for the view and the privacy, but he'd thought better of it:

From the middle floor, he would be able to hear when Harry or Luna moved within their own rooms, or if they went to each other's rooms, or if they went to the stairs. He would be able to hear their movements, and they would not be able to hear his. It was comforting, to know that they couldn't leave the house without him hearing; apparating was loud, and the floors and stairs creaked. If anyone went anywhere in this house, Tom would know.

He still liked the top floor better, but the feeling of security that came with being aware of everyone's movements was worth a slightly less dazzling view and slightly decreased privacy.

"Is there a way to change the colors?" he added, as bright red wouldn't have been his first choice, and Harry laughed.

"What color would you prefer?"

Tom considered. Red was too strong, but he didn't mind, broadly, the aesthetics of the house. "Brown is sensible," he said. Essentially the same as red, but less accosting.

"Brown it is," Harry said. He twirled his wand cockily in his hand, muttered a spell, and the curtains and bedcovers turned...bright orange.

Luna cackled so loudly, Tom jumped. She caught at his bedpost to keep from doubling over, and with her other hand, she rubbed moisture from her eyes.

"It's not that funny," Harry pouted. 

Tom didn't quite agree; it was gratifying to see that Father was fallible, and pleasant to watch Mother laugh at him. He found himself laughing, too, more quietly, and Harry noticed and appeared betrayed. 

"It's not that funny," Harry insisted. "So I didn't master decorative spells; sue me!"

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Harry," Luna said, sitting down on Tom's bed the way she had back at Wool's, as if laughing had taken a lot out of her. She waved her wand to correct Harry's mistake; the curtains and bedcovers became an earthy shade of brown. "You're still much better at dueling than I am. Do you like this shade, Tom? Or something lighter?"

"This is fine." He backed up to the doorway, so he could look at the whole room, and at Harry and Luna in it. Everything he owned was here, and it was more and better than it had been this morning. If only he could be sure that it would stay.

He suddenly thought of the front door, which hadn't even been locked when they'd arrived. Harry and Luna were too open, too loose, too...

Kreacher _crack_ ed into the room, nearly startling Tom off his feet. "Dinner is served, Masters," the elf said, in his voice like a bullfrog.

"Not masters," Harry corrected. "You can just call us by our names."

"If Master _orders_ it," Kreacher said with a grin. It was already strange enough to see such a face, but to see it grin was a whole new surprise.

"Touche," Harry sighed. "You know that you win more arguments when I'm hungry."

Tom pocketed that information, too.

They descended the stairs to the ground floor, and Tom was led to a part of the house he hadn't yet seen: the dining room.

He had never had cause to call a dining room "cozy" before. At Wool's, they only ever ate in a large, cold, gray room full of long, wobbly tables with long, wobbly benches, and the other children were always running around and making noise and messing with each other's food. Recently, he had developed enough notoriety to be left alone, but in his earliest years, he had dined with his forehead resting on the table's edge and his bowl in his lap, under the table, where no one could reach it. The food was always something cold and flavorless and never quite the intended texture.

But here, there was only one table: a round one, with seven chairs around it (wooden, with cushions on the seat and back). There was a fireplace in this room, too; larger than the ones in the bedrooms, and already alight with orange flames.

And the food...well, even just seeing and smelling it, Tom was glad to have given Kreacher a chance to prove himself. There was a beef stew with chopped up carrots, a platter of mashed potatoes gleaming with butter, some kind of soup, a baked chicken, and a blueberry pie. All of it radiated wisps of steam, fresh and warm and wonderful-smelling; Tom actually licked his lips.

But what he found himself saying was: "Too many chairs; there should only be three." His voice was hoarse with amazement. He cleared his throat and tried again, "We should get rid of the four extra chairs. Put them in another room."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"We shouldn't act as if there's room for other people; there's only us."

"And Kreacher," Luna pointed out, and Tom tensed (and he noticed that Harry did, too). "Suppose Kreacher wants to eat with us."

"He doesn't," Tom said. He looked up and saw Luna's confusion and Harry's suspicion, and he softened his tone. "I've just never had a mother and father to myself before. I want us to eat together, with no one else."

Both Luna's confusion and Harry's suspicion yielded to the sympathetic looks he'd been hoping for.

"I'm glad you told us," Luna said brightly. "Thank you for telling us; I don't always understand why people act the way they do, so thank you for explaining." With a smile, she went to sit at the table and started dishing herself some pie.

"No one's taking us away," Harry added, more serious-looking than Luna. He bent closer to Tom's eye-level, and again Tom saw the odd scar on his forehead. "No attention we show to anyone else means we care about you any less."

"Of course it does," Tom said, frowning. "Time is finite, and you choose who you spend it on."

"That doesn't-"

Luna made a noise like a whimper, and whatever Harry would have said, now he went to her side and asked, "Are you okay?"

"Just nicked my finger," she answered, setting down the knife with which she'd been slicing the pie. "Got distracted. There, it's healed now. You two should sit and eat, too. And you can continue discussing the inexhaustible nature of love with Tom."

"Was it the 'time is finite' thing that 'distracted' you?" Harry asked, while obediently moving into a seat opposite her.

"I'm _fine_ , Harry," Luna said, which wasn't an answer. She slipped her wand back behind her ear, having evidently used it to heal her finger.

Tom grabbed one of the spare chairs and began casually moving it to the far wall. "Do you _need_ a wand, to do magic?" he asked.

"No. A wand helps to control your magic. But there are lots of ways; some very powerful witches and wizards practice magic wandlessly. Some find it easier to brew potions than to cast spells."

"Merope Gaunt preferred to brew potions," Harry said.

Tom gathered that Harry thought he was providing a service: fulfilling some kind of need to know about Merope Gaunt. A need which Tom did not have, because Merope Gaunt had done nothing for him since he was born. She hadn't even named him properly: "Thomas". Honestly. He moved a second extra chair to the wall. "How do you know that she preferred potions, if you didn't know her?"

"You are asking these questions to avoid discussing your need to rearrange the dining room," Harry accused.

"And you are pointing that out to avoid _answering_ the question," Tom guessed, going for a third chair. "Did you know Merope, or not?"

"I didn't know her, but I knew _about_ her. And how about we leave one extra chair? Four chairs is a good, even number, right? Nice compromise?"

"Enough seats for the elf to sit with us?" Tom said sourly, but he didn't grab the fourth chair. He crossed his arms tightly and deliberated over whether he would risk pushing the issue.

"Kreacher doesn't like to eat with us," Harry said. "He prefers to eat in dark corners of the house. If he _did_ want to eat with us, though, it would be nice if you left room for him. We won't be less of a family if we spend time with other people. Kreacher can be a part of your family, too."

Tom pursed his lips and slipped into a seat, leaving the fourth chair in place at the table, haunting him with its redundancy.

"I've always liked to talk to the elves," Luna said, finally settling her slice of pie onto her plate. "At Hogwarts, I mean. They were always very nice. The ghosts weren't always as nice, but they were just as interesting; they had lots of stories-"

"Um," Harry interrupted, with a bewildered smile, "what are you actually doing, Luna?"

For she had taken a ladle full of the gravy from the beef stew, and she was now drizzling it over her pie. "The sweet and savory flavors form a pleasant contrast," she said unabashedly.

"That's disgusting!" Harry laughed.

"Have you tried it?" Luna looked to Tom, as if she thought there was a chance he could provide backup.

"I absolutely will not try that. You are within your rights to call me closed-minded," Harry said, and a corner of Luna's mouth rose, as if she couldn't help it. "Do you want me to dish your food, Tom?" Harry added. "You seem hesitant to serve yourself."

Tom let Harry dish him some beef stew and a leg of chicken and a small scoop of mashed potatoes. It was so warm and tasted so good that his eyes watered as he ate, and he ducked his head to keep them from seeing.

Kreacher's prospects were looking better.

"Are you really cooking tomorrow?" he asked Harry. He had never heard of a father cooking in the first place, let alone someone _making_ their servant let them cook some nights.

"Not tomorrow," Harry said. "Tomorrow, we have dinner with the other Potters, if we can make it."

Tom swallowed a large chunk of beef. "I don't want to have dinner with the Potters." His eyes went to the fourth chair again. Four bedrooms, four chairs...he didn't like it. Suppose Harry and Luna decided they were in love after all, and they had a child of their own...He didn't like leaving room.

"We can cancel, if you're too overwhelmed," Harry said at once. "Luna has an owl; we can send them a letter saying we'll meet another time, when you're more settled in."

Postponing was good, but canceling was better. Tom allowed it, though. He could work with just postponing, for now. "You use owls to send letters?"

And from there, he listened to Harry and Luna talk, in enthusiastic, overlapping layers, about owl post, which transitioned to them talking about Hogwarts, which got them talking about Hogwarts Houses and class subjects and something called Quidditch, which sounded ridiculous and dangerous. Tom nodded along, with a convincingly blank expression. Tom listened, absorbed, and ate.

He blocked all attempts at pulling him into the conversation, to maintain the charade that he wasn't actively falling apart over the tastiness of the food and the warmth of the fire and the fact that he was a wizard and the fact that someone had chosen him and bought him soft pajamas and made his curtains brown for him. Something about sitting to eat a meal made all of the day's events and discoveries sink onto him with their full weight, and his need to control the situation grew more intense. The unlocked door and the extra chair and the narrowly-dodged extended family...he had more than he had ever had, today, and yet his grip on any of it felt so precarious. The parents he had now were wizards- _proper_ wizards, not a Muggle man and a witch who made potions and chose not to survive to take care of him. His new parents were pretty and eccentric and not allowed to ever go away.

Tom resolved to learn magic as quickly as he could. To start, he'd ask for a wand when they went out tomorrow.

"Are you alright, Tom?" Harry suddenly asked.

"Kreacher cooks very well," Tom answered, and he was surprised how much Harry brightened at his words.

"You should tell him that," he suggested.

Harry liked that sort of thing. Unnecessary kindness. Good to know; Luna seemed to like most things: honesty, sentiment, Muggle things, wizard things. Tom felt reasonably sure he could convince Luna to see his way in most arguments, if he had to; Harry, he wasn't sure.

"Well, Mother did say elves are interesting to talk to," Tom said.

"There are interesting elves and boring elves," Harry qualified. "Just like with humans."

"Oh, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was truly boring," Luna said, and there was no sign that she was joking. "There's something to learn from everyone."

"Ravenclaw," Harry said.

"Gryffindor," Luna returned.

Tom knew what these words meant, now. "What House do you think I'll be in?" he asked.

Harry hesitated. Luna deliberated, with gravy-coated blueberry pie in her mouth.

"You don't have to worry about that yet," Harry said. "Subconsciously changing your own personality to fit the founders' expectation doesn't have to start until you're eleven."

"So jaded," Luna tsked. "Of course, I agree with you that the House system is poorly executed, but there's no harm in making guesses and jokes." She turned to Tom. "So long as you know that we will love you no matter what House you're in or how you fit into that House."

Tom kept his expression blank, utilizing his well-honed skill of pretending, in this case using it to act as if the words "we will love you" hadn't just splashed his face with ice water and proceeded to run laps through his mind.

...

"Let's see it, then!" Harry called, from the landing of the second floor.

Tom's bedroom door swung open, and he stepped out dressed in his new pajamas. They were a lavender set, long-sleeved but light and cool. Harry and Luna applauded, and Tom made a face as if they were ridiculous. It was unconvincing, as he was smiling.

"Are they soft?" Luna asked, all but bouncing in place.

"They are so soft," Tom said.

"We'll have to get you more pairs like those! In different colors, so you can wear mismatched tops and bottoms if you want to."

"Right, when I dye my hair green," Tom scoffed. "I do want more of these, though!" he hastily added. "We should get pajamas from wizard stores, next time."

"As far as you know, all wizard pajamas are made of hay," Harry said. "Or snake skins."

"I can speak to snakes," Tom said matter-of-factly. "Is that normal?"

"Parseltongue?" Luna said, after only a beat of silence to process his question. "No, it's not common."

"It's a rare genetic trait," Harry said. "Maybe we can find a book on it, while we're out tomorrow."

"It's rare?" Tom repeated. "Neither of you can do it?"

"I can see your head inflating," Harry said with a grin. "No, we can't speak to snakes. Now, run along; it's bedtime. You want to be rested for tomorrow."

Tom hesitated, his gaze on them suddenly quite hard.

"We will still be here when you wake up," Harry assured him. "You will still be here when you wake up."

There was no sign that Tom had been convinced, but he nodded and turned, mechanically, into his room and closed the door behind him.

Harry sighed. The only real way to convince Tom was to let him see that it was true. To let him awaken in this house, safe and warm and still adopted.

He and Luna climbed the stairs to the top floor together, but they did not part ways to their respective bedrooms just yet. Rather, the two of them lingered in the dimness of the landing, comfortably silent for a time, just marinating in the eventfulness of the dwindling day.

"It doesn't feel like I thought it would," Luna mused, after a while. "It's more pleasant than I expected. I know that he doesn't trust us yet, but...I enjoy making him feel happy. Giving him things he should have already had; it feels like righting a wrong."

"I know what you mean," Harry said.

"Do you think we're doing a good job, so far?" Luna's brown-gray eyes were open and curious, and tired-looking. She wasn't entirely steady on her feet; she kept tilting to one side and overcorrecting.

"I hope so," Harry said. "Eventually we're going to make mistakes, but we'll just face them, and adapt, right?"

"Gryffindor," Luna said, with a sleepy smile.

"Ravenclaw," Harry returned.

...

Tom's shoulders relaxed when he heard Harry and Luna finally split up and go to bed.

He waited up for another several minutes, blinking sleep away furiously, before he deemed it safe to slip out of his room and start wandering the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this wasn't too rushed.
> 
> I looked up "how tall are eight year olds" for this chapter, lol.
> 
> Please comment! Your comments on the first chapter were so, so generous, and I'm positively humbled. Please keep commenting.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the end of the story (so far)! Comments inspire me to continue; please leave one, if you can; reading people's reactions, thoughts, likes, etc. is really good for my emotional stamina.


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